Anything for You
by LauraHuntORI
Summary: "I'd do anything for you. Anything. You know that, don't you?" Heath Barkley puts his money where his mouth is and does as Mother wishes. A Now and Then Story based on Season 1, Episode 13: The Guilt of Matt Bentell.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: **"I'd do anything for you. Anything. You know that, don't you?" –Heath Barkley to Victoria Barkley, Season 1, Episode 3: Boots with My Father's Name.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of this, except in the sense that love is ownership.

* * *

_Now:_

As Heath bent to check the mare's hooves, the palomino bent her golden head down to his and blew a whuffling breath in his ear. He turned in amused surprise and impulsively kissed her cheek. Nothing was more comforting when you felt blue than equine affection. "You want to come home with me, darlin'?" He wasn't sure how practical the coat color was, she could be too easily sunburnt, Nick might not be pleased, but she had magnificent conformation and a very pleasant disposition; he wasn't sure he could bring himself to leave her. Especially today. He needed something beautiful today.

The very last thing he had expected, eleven years after leaving Carterson Prison, and in the middle of an introduction to the much admired logging foreman Mr. Todman, was to be faced with _Matt Bentell!_ Heath had reacted purely on instinct: he had slugged the man. _He had long ago sworn to kill him— _

Blessedly, the palomino distracted him again by nibbling at his hair.

"I think she's in love with you, Heath," the breeder joked. "I've never seen her take to anyone like that."

He would buy the palomino, and if Nick cut up rough, he'd suggest they send the lovely mare to Jim Barkley up at Abbottsville. Uncle Jim's palominos were gorgeous, fit companions for this elegant creature.

He paused to marvel that he _had _an Uncle Jim. The man had been more than gracious when the family visited, he'd acted as though Heath had always been there, just another of his nephews. As accepting as Mother had been.

Mother.

He'd disappointed her. Badly.

_She didn't understand. _

He rose and buried his face in the mare's blonde mane a moment, breathing deeply of its sweet scent. It shouldn't hurt as much as it did. His heart ached as though Bentell had climbed into his chest and lashed it with a whip.

'Matt Bentell is upstairs in the guest room,' she'd said. 'Is it really in you to go up there _and kill him?_'Mother's voice had broken on the final three words, horror and disbelief audible in her normally gentle tones. No son of _hers _could possibly be capable of such a thing.

In that moment, Heath had known that no matter what he felt, no matter what terrible things had happened at Carterson, no matter what he had sworn, if he said yes, if he offered her guest any further violence at all, she wouldn't understand that either, and _she would never forgive him._

The realization had been like a wet blanket thrown down to smother the fire of his anger. He needed time to think before he forfeited the love and acceptance Mother had offered him so freely.

"Are you all right, Heath?" The horse breeder's hand came to rest lightly on his friend's shoulder.

Heath straightened up and did his best to smile. "Fine, John. She's a beauty."

"That she is," John Tyler stroked the mare's pale mane lovingly. The Virginian's horse ranch, some two hours south of Stockton, was named after the homeplace of his mestizo wife who hailed from the Santa Ynez Valley. "Will you be taking her with you today?"

Heath blushed smilingly and nodded.

"I'll get the bill of sale ready for you."

The trip had really been to buy him time as much as to buy a mare, but once he was on his way home, he had to decide. He hated Bentell. He didn't think that would change, because he didn't want it to. But being part of a family was not the same as being on your own.

His place in the family had been Mother's gift to him. He owed her.

And he was a fool, anyway. He obviously couldn't kill anyone in Mother's house.

He knew what he had to do to make things right with her.

And he would do it.

But he didn't expect it to be easy.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: **_"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." –_ from the poem "To Althea, from Prison," by Richard Lovelace (1618–1658)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of this, except in the sense that love is ownership.

* * *

_Then:_

There shouldn't have been any Confederates left in southern New Mexico Territory (or Arizona Territory as the Confederates insisted upon calling it) but there were. And there shouldn't have been any Union troops to oppose them, but there were. Above all, there shouldn't have been a twelve year old boy among those Union soldiers, but there was one…

The 'prison' was the former hacienda of Amon Carterson, who had already given his 'last full measure of devotion' to his newborn country in the New Mexico Campaign of 1862, but whose former property remained to be used in an out of the way spot about equidistant from Mesilla and El Paso.

The tiny adobe fortress, a bare tenth the size of its more famous sister prison Andersonville, was of no particular importance to the Confederacy, which by late 1864 was fully occupied with its own survival further to the east, but having captured those few hundred Yanks, the Confederacy was loath to let them go, and found Carterson's former home a handy dumping ground for them, where they would could be no further trouble to anyone.

The very first occurrence of note after the three hundred seventy Union soldiers were released into open 'plaza' at the center of the newly minted 'prison' was a bout of fisticuffs as interesting as it was unexpected. Patrick Murphy, the largest and strongest of the Irish contingent, trapped his fellow soldier Heath Barkley in the northeast corner of the fourteen foot high adobe enclosure, and pounded the slight young man into jelly.

It was a truly awesome beating.

Not one of the men had the faintest, remotest clue what young Barkley might have done to offend the big Irishman, but do something he clearly had. Murphy continued to hit the boy well after the few who thought to intervene had desisted, long after Heath himself had ceased even the slightest effort at self- defense; for so long, in fact, that observers thought Murphy intended to kill Charlie Whitehorse's former protégé now that the Indian scout himself (who had fortuitously escaped capture) was no longer around to protect the young man.

What the Confederate guards thought of the business, no one knew, but they certainly did nothing to stop the carnage, merely watching from start to finish with intense interest, and making bets with each other as to how much longer it could possibly last. It appeared that keeping their charges from beating each other to death was not numbered among the guard's duties.

Miraculously, Heath remained conscious through every blow. At last, when it seemed that the next punch would surely put him under, Murphy paused, fist cocked. "You decide, boyo. Are you going to live or die?"

Heath's eyes were swollen shut, and every fiber of his being save only his vocal chords screamed with pain. He took an agonized gasp of breath, but his voice when he answered was strong enough to be audible to the third rank of spectators, "Live."

This announcement was met with a cheer.

Murphy nodded grimly. "Well, I guarantee you won't enjoy it." The big man let fly with a final right cross that put his victim down for good.

* * *

Heath did not so much awake as float to the surface of a sea of pain.

"Are you listening to me, Bhoy?"

Heath didn't answer, and _something _happened that caused his pain to increase, though he hurt too much to know what. He hurt in places he had never before known he had places.

"You had better listen to me," the voice scolded.

"List'nin,'" a voice Heath didn't recognize slurred.

The lilting voice made a noise that seemed to be approval (there was no further increase in pain at least) and continued in a whisper from next to Heath's ear. The voice was telling the story of a blacksmith whose watchdog had been killed by a named Sétanta. The blacksmith was put out by this, because the hound had taken a year to train. The boy had therefore offered to serve as the blacksmith's hound for a year while the man trained another. And that is how the boy's name came to be changed to Cuhullin, which meant 'Culann's hound.'

Heath lay curled in a ball on something made of cloth (a blanket? a uniform jacket?) and the owner of the lilting voice lay at his back, curved around him spoon-fashion. Heath moved a hand. He was still wearing his uniform, the front of which was sticky with blood, apparently his own. Who was protecting him? Had someone stepped in and defended him against Murphy?

From his voice, his savior was an Irishman, but he couldn't imagine any of the Irish he was acquainted with going against Murphy… not for him, certainly.

"… CuMurphy." The voice paused, apparently awaiting an answer, because when Heath didn't respond _something_ caused yet another wave of discomfort. "Did you hear me, boyo?" the voice breathed.

Heath's lip was split, and when he licked it, he tasted blood. _Oh, Lord. _"I swear I didn't kill your dog, Pat." He swallowed, then shuddered. "I didn't even know you had a dog."

"I didn't," Pat whispered. "Until now."


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: **Thomson was Heath's mother's surname, not his. Heath's surname is Barkley. That is the reason why seeing Tom Barkley's obituary caused him to conclude that Tom Barkley must be his father.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of this, except in the sense that love is ownership.

* * *

_Now:_

Heath arrived home early in the evening with a better attitude, to be met at the corral by Nick, who regarded the gorgeous mare in surprise. "What're you planning to do with her? Send her over to Uncle Jim?"

"We can if you don't want her here."

"Hmmm. Sure is a beauty. Don't know if I can bear to send her away."

"That's how I felt about leaving her." Heath took a breath to ask evenly, "The Bentells still here?"

"Yeah... about that: Mother and Jarrod and I would like to see you in the study before supper."

"Just give me a half hour to take care of these horses and clean up, and I'll—"

"I'll take care of them," Nick offered. "You go get cleaned up, and I'll see you inside."

Heath hesitated. "Thanks, big brother."

Nick Barkley watched the younger man head obediently into the house. "Yeah," he breathed.

* * *

They made Heath sit on the red sofa before the fireplace before they would speak to him.

The family had decided to keep Bentell on as logging foreman. Naturally. Heath winced. Why hadn't he expected it? He should have.

He fought to keep his breathing steady. It was fine. Bentell had done good work for the family at the logging camp; they were pleased.

There was no reason not to keep him. He'd been using a different name, but he wasn't a fugitive. He'd been tried and found innocent.

Innocent. Jesus.

It didn't matter. Heath's love for his family was more important than his hatred for Bentell. If Jarrod hadn't insisted Nick hire him, if Mother hadn't decreed his place was here with the family, if Nick hadn't set aside his initial doubts about his new brother, he'd be alone out in the world somewhere, belonging to no one.

Heath tasted blood. Felt again the pressure of Pat's wrist against his mouth and heard the lilt of the Irishman's voice in his head as it had once sounded in his ears. _'You chose to live.' _

_No! The war was over! He was free! _He'd only bitten his lip. It was his own blood he swallowed. Everything was fine. Bentell and his wife would soon be gone, back to the logging camp, and he could forget. He could bear it until then. He'd just eat with the men until the couple left. It wouldn't be long.

Before that happened though, he had a duty to perform. _Say it, _he told himself. _Waiting won't make it easier. Get it over with. Just tell her. _

Heath was only half listening to Mother and Jarrod's plan for the logging camp. A flume. Bentell wanted to build a flume. Great. Let him. The sooner the man got out of here, the quicker he could get started on it, but Heath didn't need to know. _Why are they telling me?_

The other half of Heath's mind worked at screwing up his courage to do what he must. But it was hard. Maybe the hardest thing he'd ever had to do. He licked his lips, and finally interrupted. "Mother, I've been thinking about what you said earlier, and I'd… I'd just like to say this—" Three sets of Barkley eyes were riveted on Heath's face – "If you want me to apologize to him before they leave, I will."

Jarrod was taken aback. "Apologize to Bentell?" he asked, just to be sure he'd understood.

Heath nodded.

"You'd do that?" Approval was audible in Mother's voice. Thank God.

"Just say the word," Heath confirmed.

"It isn't necessary," she assured him. "I told you I understood how you felt. I've already apologized for you."

That was the good news.

But _Boy Howdy! The bad news!_

The bad news was what she _did _want him to do.

He struggled to take it in, felt himself trembling under cover of an angry refusal.

He was not to be allowed to cheer from the sidelines while someone else killed his longtime enemy.

He was not to be allowed to forget about Bentell as soon as the man was out of the house.

He was to accompany the Bentells back to the logging camp. To be Bentell's guardian and protector. His hound.

Except he wasn't going to do it! He _couldn't. _

He fled to the fireplace.

Mother followed. "You go with him," she ordered in her special granite hard 'Mother says' voice, gripping his arm and tugging at it for emphasis. "You go with him, you eat with him, you work with him, you live with him, and you pray to God to rid yourself of the hate that's inside you. Because unless you do that hate will eventually destroy you."

Hating Bentell hadn't destroyed him so far. It had kept him alive. He moved again to escape, this time headed for the door.

Mother grabbed his sleeves to stop him. She was relentless. "Do you want to hate so?"

_Yes!_

He couldn't answer her aloud. He had nothing to say that wouldn't make her even angrier and disappoint her even more. He kept a rein on his temper with difficulty. She was Mother, and she had the right to say whatever she wanted to him, and he would take it, had to take it.

"Do you want the memory of Carterson to gnaw at you forever?"

_You're the one who wants to stir those memories up, not me! Eighteen men. Shot. Without warning. _

"What we're asking you to do isn't supposed to be easy."

_Not easy? It was impossible._

"Show us what you inherited from your father. Show us some of Tom Barkley's guts."

Heath pulled himself from her grasp and ran.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: **I appreciate everyone's reviews and point of view. Naturally, each viewer of the show and reader/writer of fanfiction must make certain assumptions about what has gone on before/between the canon stories. ~ In all my stories, Heath's name from the time of his birth is Heath Barkley. This is my choice. I have chosen to have Heath's mother give him his father's surname because that is what makes sense to me. It is my understanding that under the common law she has a perfect right to give him any surname she wishes. My story 'Child of No One' explores this issue more thoroughly. Heath has no right to inherit anything from Tom Barkley, but his mother has the right to give him (and he has the right to use) the name Barkley, or Thomson, or Simmons, or Sawyer, or Hunt, or Guest, or indeed any other name. As for her name, I speculate that she was married twice: once to a Mr. Thomson, then later to Charlie Sawyer. After Sawyer's death, I believe she stopped talking about Sawyer and stopped using his name, leading Heath to conclude that it was Mr. Thomson who was drowned (thus accounting for his failure to recognize Sawyer's name or to say "I thought you were dead" as Hannah does when she sees Sawyer.) I would not characterize being told "I loved your father, he was a good man, and I've given you his last name" as knowing "who he was." Barkley is not that uncommon a name. ~ I do not think Leah was a liar, just not particularly communicative. Nor do I think she was hiding from Tom Barkley: she was there to receive his letter and still lived in Strawberry until the day of her death. Tom Barkley could easily have located her any time he wished. ~ I can think of many reasons to keep an obituary in a bible, and many reasons why a dying person would ask someone to get a bible. But my intention is not to be A/U: I believe she did indeed have Heath get the bible and obituary for the same reason as everyone else, to at last reveal to him which of all the Mr. Barkleys in the world was his father. ~ We all interpret the canon based on our own personal knowledge and experiences, so it is natural that different people think different things. Believe as you wish. I respect your beliefs, even where they differ from mine. ~ The canon is silent on the subject of what surname Heath actually used before coming to the Barkleys; therefore, I consider any name an author chooses for him to be canon compliant. The assumptions I make are the foundation on which I build my stories. I can do no other.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of this, except in the sense that love is ownership. The legal opinions expressed in this story are designed for dramatic and entertainment purposes only and are not intended to take the place of the advice of an attorney licensed to practice in your state.

* * *

_Then:_

Murphy had not been joking. Having given Heath the beating of his life, he expected the younger man to guard his gear during the day, sleep next to him at night, and generally do whatever he was told.

"Why should I?"

"Because I'll whip you like a father if you so much as think of disobeying me."

Heath shook his head. "My father never whipped me."

"Bullshite."

"It's true," Heath said. "He never touched me."

"Well, I will."

* * *

Carterson's re-purposed hacienda was not ideal as a prison. It was too small for the number of men it held. Except for the high adobe walls and corner watch towers, it did not contain the safety features usual in a prison. Nothing prevented prisoners from walking right up to the center plaza's adobe walls, and so it was perhaps inevitable than an escape attempt should be made right at the outset.

A hundred prisoners rushed the north wall and began climbing onto each other's shoulders in an effort to form a human ramp they could use to go over the wall. The guards shouted for them to stop to no avail. A hail of bullets took the lives of two dozen, and many more were injured before the escapees abandoned the attempt.

Burial detail under shotgun guard outside the walls provided a welcome respite from the crowded interior of the prison. Heath, despite the pounding he'd taken from Murphy, volunteered.

* * *

"What's this shite?" Pat Murphy asked his hound, as he watched the boy consuming the pink and white contents of his bowl with apparent relish.

Heath licked his bottom lip. "It's pozole de frijoles y maiz. Beans and hominy."

"And what in the name of bleeding Jesus is that. Maize, did you say? Like Indian meal?"

"Sort of. It's not ground, though. You soak the kernels in lye, and then—"

"Lye?! Sweet Jesus and the blessed saints preserve us! Doesn't it burn your throat?"

Heath chuckled. "No. In fact, I've eaten plenty of worse things. Wish there was more though." He sighed, and started to lick the bowl.

"Not like to starve any time soon, is he?" Pat's second cousin Osheen opined, amused.

Pat leaned down to ruffled Heath's hair, making him flinch. Pat was annoyed. "You think I'm gonna beat you right here?"

"You've done it before," Heath snapped.

"Your hound's not very well trained," one of the other men suggested.

"He's trained well enough," Murphy replied. "I don't want him tame."

"I really hate you, Pat, you know that?" Heath complained.

The big Irishman winked at him. "I know you do, lad. That's why I like you."

* * *

Some of the prisoners had been assigned to dig a trench around the walls of the plaza, in order to foil any further mad attempts to scale the adobe walls. Heath found himself working next to Aaron Condon, whose brother had been wounded in the escape attempt. What must it be like to have a brother? Someone you could trust, no matter what, even in a place like this? "How's Gil?"

Aaron shrugged. "Hanging in there. Murphy still bothering you?"

"Nothing I can't handle," Heath told him.

The corner of Aaron's mouth turned up at this piece of bravado. "Sure, Heath. We all saw how you handled him before."

* * *

"The dear lad here claims the sainted Mr. Barkley never whipped him." Pat complained to his second cousin.

Osheen considered. "You Irish?"

"I don't think so."

"It's an Irish name. Barkleys galore in County Antrim," the wiry little redhead pointed out. "You sure you're not at least a little Irish?"

Heath shook his head. "No," he admitted.

He had meant, _'no, I'm not sure,' _but Pat took up the words with a mocking laugh. "Och, now, he wouldn't want to claim the honor of being Irish! Well, Heath, m'lad, the wonderful thing about the Irish is our great toleration for other races less fortunate."

"Yeah, I think I've already had firsthand experience of your 'toleration,' Pat."

* * *

Had their incarceration lasted only a week, the experience might have served merely as amusing conversational fodder in after years. But it didn't end after a week, nor after two, nor for many weeks, for months thereafter.

And when the trench around the walls had been completed, many of the prisoners found they couldn't resist the urge to use the shallow ditch as a latrine (the facilities of the original hacienda being woefully inadequate for the bodily needs of 350 men), and the resulting stench made conditions in the plaza… decidedly stinky.

Then the new commandant arrived. To Heath's surprise, Matthew Bentell was a dead ringer for his Uncle Matt back in Strawberry. Right down to the first name.

Heath sincerely doubted it was a good sign.

It wasn't.

It wasn't a good sign at all.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: **_"__I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain." _― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of this, except in the sense that love is ownership.

* * *

_Now:_

She found him where she had found him the first time she'd ever seen him: hunkered down amidst the flowers at Father's grave. She thought perhaps he'd been so lost in thought he hadn't heard her approach, but then he spoke.

"Come to whip me again, sis?"

She had changed back into trousers, so she hunkered down next to him. "We missed you at supper," she remarked mildly.

Heath heaved a sigh. "And I'm supposed to 'eat with him.'" He moved his eyes from his father's grave to his sister's face. "Did they tell you what else I have to do?"

She nodded. "Are you going to?"

His eyes, his whole head moved back to the name carved on the stone. Thomas Barkley. A name that represented a father to her, a warm, living, breathing, loving man, but was only a name to him, and could never really be anything else, no matter how much he might wish it. _Show us some of Tom Barkley's guts._ How could he show them something he himself had never seen? "Could _he_ have done it?_" _The deep voice was plaintive, almost yearning.

"I don't know," she confessed. "Maybe. Or maybe he would have refused to do it."

Her brother emitted a long, deep, audible breath and the low pitched voice was gravelly with sorrow and with regret. "I dunno if I can, sis… and I dunno what'll happen if I refuse."

"You'll stay here," she replied, in an enviably confident tone.

"I hope so," he said, not to her, but to the stone.

She too studied Father's gravestone, the name and dates deeply carved, the thought of his love warming and sustaining her. What did Heath feel when he saw Father's name? "Do you know what _he _used to say?"

"No," was the forlorn admission. "I don't know anything he used to say."

Brother and sister turned simultaneously to stare at each other, mirror images, male and female.

Audra's voice dropped in pitch to match her brother's. "He'd say, 'We can't know what's going to happen, but I know I will love you no matter whatever.'"

She raised her index finger to gently touch the tip of her brother's nose, as he sometimes did to her. "So know this: whether you decide to go with Mr. Bentell or not, I will still love you, big brother, _no matter whatever_."

She had to rise and leave him them, for while Heath wasn't crying, Audra was.

* * *

She entered the house through the back door. "Silas," she asked. "Where is everyone?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Bentell have retired to the guest room for the night, your Momma, Mr. Jarrod, and Mr. Nick are in the study, and Mr. Heath… hasn't come back yet."

"I've just been with him," she announced. "Do you know what's happening?"

"Your momma, Mr. Jarrod, and Mr. Nick told Mr. Heath he has to go back to the logging camp with Mr. Bentell," the butler recapped.

She stared at him for a moment, then asked, "Do you think it's right?"

Silas considered. It was not his place to offer an opinion, but she had asked. "No, Miss Audra, I don't."

Audra nodded. "Neither do I."

* * *

Audra stormed into the study.

Nick spoke first. "Heath come back yet?"

"No, but I want to talk about him."

"What is it, sis?" Jarrod asked.

"It isn't fair, what you're doing to him."

"Darling, we told you—" Mother began.

"You told me Mr. Bentell was in charge of the prison camp where Heath was held, that he was starved there, and beaten, and his friends were killed, and yet you expect him to pretend it never happe—"

"We don't expect that," Mother said. "But the hating has to end, and this is the best w—"

"Why?" Audra demanded.

"Why what?"

"Why does the hating have to end? Why shouldn't Heath hate him? I think he _should! _I'd hate anyone who did those things to me, to my friends—"

"You don't understand, Audra," Mother sighed. "Poor Mr. and Mrs. Bentell—"

"Poor _Mr. Bentell?!_ Mother, you sound like you care more about Mr. Bentell than you do about Heath!"

Jarrod tried to intervene. "Honey, Matt Bentell was found innocent of war crimes by a court of l—"

"Matt Bentell is not _our brother!_" That silenced her oldest sibling, at least for the moment.

Not so Nick. "Now wait just a minute—"

"Could _you _do it, Nick? Honestly? Your enemy, who let your friends die, who starved you, beat you—"

"Come on, Audra, we've all seen his back: there's not a mark on it!"

There was a moment of stunned silence, as they all took in the fact that Nick had just basically called Heath a liar.

"Not every whippin' leaves marks you can see, Mr. Nick."

Silas.

"Now look here, Silas—"

"Mr. Nick, I was a house servant, treated special, and never a field slave, but I seen a few things in my time back there, and I tell you true, if you was to hire on my ole master, and ask me to work with him again, I'd say no."

Mother stepped back into the fray. "We've all hated, and that's the point. When your father died, I prayed—"

"When Father died, we didn't _hire_ the man who'd shot him, no one asked us to _eat_ with him, and Mr. Random _killed_ him. So if you prayed to rid yourself of hatred for _that _man, you did it only _after he was_ _dead!_"

Mother and daughter stared at each other. Mother wanted to argue, but how could she? Audra was absolutely right. The two situations were not comparable at all.

"Could you do it, Mother? Work with someone who had wronged you so terribly?"

Honesty, it was about honesty. Victoria had been thinking only about hatred, and the circumstances that engendered such feelings. She and Tom had been in a Mexican prison, before General Ruiz and his friends got them out. She imagined living, working, eating with her jailor. He'd only been doing his duty… She moistened her lips. "I hope I could, Audra."

"Jarrod?"

He paused a moment for thought. "I don't know, sis, but like Mother, I hope I could."

"But you don't know, either of you?"

Mother and son replied in unison. "No."

"Well, I do know," Nick declared, eying Silas, then Audra. "I couldn't."


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: **_ The heart has reasons that reason does not understand._ – Thomas Trahern

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of this, except in the sense that love is ownership.

* * *

_Then:_

Cholera.

If conditions had been terrible before, dozens of sick men emitting quarts of watery vomitus and the characteristic strange white 'rice water' diarrhea of the disease made things exponentially worse.

On the bright side, it killed quickly, often within a few hours. And dramatically reduced the overcrowding problem.

On the dark side, it spread quickly, and killed many. With Pat Murphy's blessing, Heath once again volunteered to dig graves outside the walls.

Commandant Bentell refused to allow any type of funeral or prayers graveside nor would he allow the digging of separate graves. Instead large trenches were dug, and the dead men dropped in. "Like they were nothin' human or flesh," as Heath complained, after his third day of it.

Unfortunately, his task the following day was not that of grave digger, but drawer of water.

Water at Carterson Prison was drawn from a well within the adobe walls, inside a tiny room known as the 'well room.' This room was reached via a narrow wooden stairway. Workers drew the water up in buckets that then had to be carried up the stairs, along a gallery to the tiny infirmary, down another flight to the water butts in the central plaza, and to the water tank in the big kitchen on the plaza's west side.

By way of combating the terrible disease without medicine of any kind, the post doctor had decreed that no one should drink any water which had not stood out in full sunlight for at least twelve hours.

Heath, whose sole reason for volunteering for the exhausting duty was to get a chance to drink the cool water as it came out of the well, rather than warm and buggy from the communal water butts, and not understanding why the one pleasure to be had in this Godforsaken pesthole was being denied him, made the mistake of disobeying this directive in front of not only the guards (who perhaps wouldn't have cared), but the doctor.

The medical man put a hand on Heath's arm to stop him. "You understand you're forbidden to drink that until it's stood out for a day?"

"It won't be fit to drink after it's stood out for a day," Heath pointed out.

The doctor was puzzled. He'd never seen this young man be anything but polite when he'd been delivering water to the infirmary, or helping to carry out the dead. Why was he acting this way?

"It's for your own good," the doctor told him, kindly. "To keep you from getting sick."

"How exactly is drinking putrid water going to keep me from getting sick?" Heath wondered.

Not feeling equal to explaining modern medical theory to a ragged prisoner of war, the surgeon fell back on threats. "I can force you."

Heath rolled his eyes. "Now, why doesn't that surprise me?"

One of the guards coughed to cover his laugh. The surgeon looked at his fellow Confederate worriedly, then hurried away.

"Glad to see he's lookin' out for the health of us prisoners," Heath remarked in amusement before returning to work.

He had finished his work and was back in the Irish enclave before Bentell sent the guards for him.

* * *

The whipping post in the central plaza was of the type known as a 'triangle.'

The punishment sergeant drew Heath aside into the post blacksmith shop for a moment. "What in God's name were you thinking of, boy?"

"What?"

"Get sense, boy: you are _the example_, do you understand? Bentell _means _no one is to drink that water. And you did it. And now you're gonna pay for it."

"It's just water. The carriers are allowed to—"

"Not now they're not. How old are you?"

"Old enough to have killed you before I was captured. And Bentell, too."

"And old enough to be killed by me with this whip," the sergeant flourished the multipronged flogger for emphasis, "if you don't tell me right now how old you are."

"Thirteen," Heath breathed, wide-eyed with alarm at the thought he would actually be struck with _that. _

The sergeant swore fluently. Heath, who had grown up in mining camps and been in the army, was unfamiliar with some of the terms he used. The sergeant tossed the heavy whip aside and picked up a lighter one with only a single slender thong. He was shaking his head as he grabbed Heath's arm to pull him outside. "Come on, idiot, and get that shirt off."

* * *

It was humiliating. Heath wished he had understood the consequences so he could have made a better choice. Too late now. He closed his eyes, and listened while the surgeon read out the directive, and then Bentell explained how Heath had willfully disregarded it. Such disobedience would not be tolerated.

"Begin," Bentell said.

Heath braced himself.

_Whhisshh—Crack!_

_Boy Howdy! _Heath was no stranger to pain, but a whip was a new sensation for him.

_Whhisshh—Crack!_

It stung like the dickens, and he thought his arms were going numb from being tied above his head, but he knew it could have been a lot worse.

_Crack!_

The pain came in waves, crashing over him not when the whip actually touched him, but a fraction of a second later, then receding slightly as the sergeant drew the whip back. Then—

_Crack!_

It was like the sting of a hornet, if a hornet could sting in a line all at once down your back.

_Whhisshh—CRACK!_ Heath bit his tongue, and that pain (oddly) seemed worse somehow than the bright lines of fire across his back. He tasted blood in his mouth. _Crack! _

_All right,_ he thought_, I'll only drink from the water butts!_

_CRACK!_

There was a pause.

_Please God, let it be over. _Heath gulped in air for a few precious moments as though it were the forbidden water. Then–

_Whisshh—Crack! _ The blows varied in intensity, some lighter, some—

**_Crack! _**Harder.

_I swear it won't happen again, Doc._

_Whisshh—Crack! _Heath's back sizzled like a hot skillet when a drop of water dances across it.

_CRACK! _

_Please. Please stop. _

**_CRACK!_**

Another pause.

_Please. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. _

The sweetest words in the English language were, "Cut him down."

* * *

Pat insisted on inspecting his back.

"Leave me alone, Pat. I'm fine."

"You'll get that shirt off, m'lad, and lie down here, or I'll paddle your backside for you on top of everything else."

Heath unbuttoned his shirt again, took it off, and lay belly down on Pat's blanket.

Pat sat next to him, and ran a gentle palm over Heath's back, enjoying the heat of his firm young flesh. The boy was bleeding a little, but not badly, just oozing.

"You're in luck, alanna," Pat crooned. "The sergeant must have learned his business in a whore house."


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note: **_ "__But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;__"_ –Matthew 5:44, Holy Bible (KJV)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of this, except in the sense that love is ownership.

* * *

_Now:_

"It's not fair. None of us were at Carterson. We don't know what Heath went through there, but we know it was terrible. We should tell him he doesn't have go with the Bentells," Audra told them.

"I agree," Nick said.

"And me," Silas added.

The vote was three to two. Victoria and Jarrod looked at each other, communing without words. Finally, Mother nodded, and Jarrod agreed, "If Heath still says tomorrow morning that he won't go with the Bentells, we'll tell him he doesn't have to. Will that satisfy you?"

Audra opened her mouth to object that a choice their brother didn't know about was no choice at all, when Silas answered, "That'll be fine, Mr. Barkley. Mrs. Barkley." He turned to Audra. "Miss Audra, can you help me in the kitchen, please?"

Audra blinked at the butler in confusion, but said, "Certainly."

When the two were out of earshot of the others, Audra whispered, "Silas, how is this going to help? What's the good of their giving in, if Heath doesn't know they have?"

"Because, Miss Audra, we gonna tell him."

* * *

Audra had expected Heath to be happier.

As Silas had predicted, her brother entered the house through the back door and came straight into the kitchen where the two of them were waiting up for him.

Plainly, Heath _was _relieved by their news, but he did not seem to feel that the position had materially altered. "So I don't _have _to go, but Mother and Jarrod still want me to."

"They admitted it wasn't fair to ask it of you." Audra's voice trailed off, and she stared at her brother.

"Whoever said life was fair, little sister?" Heath smiled at her, but it was a painful thing to see. "Thank you," he told them, looking at each in turn, "for sticking up for me." He was moving past them, up the back stairs to the bedroom floor.

"Wait, Heath," Audra called. "You don't understand—"

"He understands, Miss Audra," Silas assured her. "Better than we do."

* * *

Sleep eluded him. He remembered the day he had followed Nick into the Myles' pasture even though he'd been virtually certain he'd be shot (and had been); remembered the night Korby Kyles' father and brothers had cornered him in the smithy, and the hiss of the branding iron burning the Barkley B into the wall above his shoulder. The sting of the whip at Carterson, the taste of the water, hunger so intense it was impossible to tell what it was anymore.

Pat lying dead in his arms.

The sense of being utterly lost and forsaken.

With the Barkleys he was home, and had everything he'd ever dreamed of: people he loved and belonged to, who loved him. He would never have gotten in the door without Jarrod; could never have stayed without Mother.

Mother had chosen to see him as her son, rather than as the proof that her husband had cheated on her. She could have seen it that way; she had every right… every right to hate him, had she chosen to, but she had chosen to love him instead.

And now, she asked him to make the same choice. To love, when he had every reason to hate.

He thought of the sermon from church last Sunday: "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

How had the pastor known, days before it happened, what he needed to have heard?

He knew that too of course: "Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him." On that thought, he slept.

* * *

On her way up to bed, Victoria Barkley paused outside her son's door. Did she ask too much of him? She put her hand on the knob and eased his door open.

Heath lay asleep, his soft breathing regular and even. Faint moonlight illumined his face, and he looked like a child lying there, like the child he must have been when he'd been at Carterson.

He had frightened her, when he'd said he had sworn to kill Bentell if he ever saw him again. She didn't want to be afraid of her own son… He had held his temper when speaking to her, he hadn't come upstairs after the man… perhaps it was enough.

"Heavenly Father," she whispered. "Fill my son's heart with your love."

Heath opened his eyes in time to see the hem of her white dressing gown clear the threshold before the door clicked softly shut behind her.

* * *

Heath had breakfast with the men. He knew they could tell something was wrong, but they respected him, and those who greeted him allowed him his space. It comforted him, to drink coffee with sugar, and eat beans, and bacon, and biscuits drizzled with molasses, as he'd done on his first real job out of Carterson, where it had been a joy merely to be free, and working, and alive.

He was finishing his last biscuit when someone filled his coffee cup, set down the pot, and sat down across from him.

Barrett.

Heath looked at his old nemesis, watching as he blew on his own coffee. The other men were drifting off to their work, but Barrett seemed in no hurry. When the two were the only ones left in the room, the hand asked, "Can I help?"

Heath surprised himself by explaining the matter fully to the former Confederate soldier, finally ending, "Would you be willing to do it, Barrett, if you could chose not to? Live, work, and eat with someone you hated, just because your family asked you to?"

Barrett had listened to the whole without speaking, but at this question he blushed and lowered his gaze for a moment to the deal table between them. "I don't know about me, Mr. Barkley" the cowhand admitted, softly, lifting his eyes again to meet his employer's. "But we already know you'd be willing, because you've done it: with me."

* * *

The Bentells did not keep the Barkleys waiting, but were on time to breakfast. Victoria surveyed the assembled company: Nick, Jarrod, and Audra were present, but no Heath. She fought her disappointment for a moment. The Bentells were safe. Maybe he wouldn't go with them, but she was _sure _he wouldn't do anything against them, either.

"Silas," she asked, as the butler entered the room, "has my son—"

"Mrs. Barkley," Silas interrupted, "Mr. Heath had some work to finish up this morning, but he say to tell you he be ready to leave whenever Mr. and Mrs. Bentell are."

Relief flooded her. She caught the attention of the others at the table, and they all bowed their heads and folded their hands while Victoria said the grace: "O Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for Thy blessings, for the food on this table, and for Thy boundless love."


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note: **_ Whom the father loves, he chastens._

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of this, except in the sense that love is ownership.

* * *

_Then:_

Maggots could be surprisingly aggressive.

That one had actually jumped from the bowl onto Heath's lip. Maybe it was the dried blood. Did maggots eat blood? Heath had no idea.

He pulled the disgusting creature off his split lip and dropped it back in the bowl. Stupid, really. He should just man up and eat it now, Pat wasn't going to let him leave until the bowl was empty, maggots and all.

He really, truly, genuinely wished he had not disobeyed the doctor's directive.

It had started the day after the flogging, when he'd presented himself at the gate for work detail.

No, that wasn't true, it had started the night of the flogging.

"You lied, didn't you, awick?" Pat had whispered from next to him. They were not spooned that night, because, for a wonder, Pat was worried about injuring Heath's back further.

"I'm not a liar, Pat," he'd whispered back.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of, bhoy. Everyone's father whips him at some time or other, when he does something wrong."

_'Oh, give it a rest, Pat,'_ Heath had thought. He'd had enough of whips today without this argument all over again. "I've told you a million times, he never touched me."

Pat had been silent for a long time. "He must not have loved you then."

To that, Heath had had no answer.

Then the next morning, his favorite guard Rounkles had suggested that he 'rest' for a few days to get over the flogging.

"It wasn't so bad that I can't work," Heath had reassured the young Confederate. "And I'd just as soon have something to occupy my mind other than what a jackass I made of myself."

Rounkles sighed. So much for being polite. "I can't put you on a work detail, Heath. Your privileges have been suspended. I'm sorry."

_Oh._ Odd to think of working as a privilege. Yet maybe it was a privilege at that, because he wanted to work. Badly. "For how long?"

Heath's counterpart shrugged helplessly. "Until Commandant Bentell decides you can be 'trusted' again."

_'I'll check back when h—ll freezes over,'_ Heath thought, but didn't say.

Pat was totally unsympathetic when he heard of it. "I don't want to hear any keening from you, awick. You're the eejit who decided it was a good idea to sass a doctor."

Which, all things considered, was as unanswerable as Pat's remarks about Mr. Barkley.

Speaking of which, he was sorry he'd ever mentioned Mr. Barkley to Pat.

As a child, he'd loved to hear his mother speak of his father, how kind he was, how gentle, how loving. Pat didn't understand these stories. To the Irishman, love was demonstrated with the rod.

"By that standard," Heath whispered furiously in the chill darkness of Pat's bedplace to his maddening 'protector,' "you must love me better than my momma does."

He could feel the movement of the big man's belly as he laughed. "I may at that, akushla."

Silence reigned between them for so long Heath had almost succeeded in falling back to sleep.

"What did your father do for a living?"

"I don't know, Pat."

The lilting voice became gentle. "How old were you when he died?"

Heath didn't know how to answer, so he didn't.

"Heath?"

"I can't tell you that, Pat," he admitted. Maybe he _was _a lia— Pain exploded against his mouth.

"Goddamm you!" the big man was suddenly enraged. He hit Heath in the stomach this time, making him gasp. Heath tried to scamble away and hissed as his sore back touched the ground.

By then the others had woken around them, and Osheen was pulling Pat away. "What's he done, akul sheshur?"

"Little Gobshite's makin' a mystery out of his feckin' fayther. Won't tell me when he died," Pat snarled.

_'Kind of crazy as a reason to start beating someone without warning in the middle of the night,' _Heath thought. He wondered which hurt most: his lip, his stomach, or his back? His lip, he thought. Definitely. He could taste blood. Great.

"He probably doesn't know," Osheen was saying calmly.

"What?!" Pat and Heath had voiced the exclamation roughly in unison.

"For the love of Heaven, Pat, haven't you figured that out yet? He's from the wrong side of the blanket, obviously. What you should be asking is if he ever _met_ his father."

Heath and Pat both stared. Osheen stared back, then let out a breath that was half a laugh, half exasperation. "You two are unbelievable."

Pat looked at his hound. "Is he right?"

Heath nodded.

"You never met your father?"

"No," Heath sighed. "I don't even know his first name."

"Oh." Pat seemed a little perplexed. "I'm glad that's settled. Lie down again, and we'll go back to sleep."

An astounded chuckle rose from deep in Heath's aching belly. "'Will you walk [back] into my parlor?' said the spider to the fly," he quoted. But there was nowhere else to go, so he lay down again.

When the others had returned to their places, Pat whispered, "You should have told me in the beginning, astorine."

"Please leave me alone, Pat," Heath begged.

For the rest of that night, at least, the big man kept quiet.

It didn't last.

"Finna," Pat declaimed to the assembled members of his cohort. "Family," he repeated, looking directly at Heath. "Family is what gives you your place in the world. Without family, you're nothing. You belong nowhere."

Heath wondered who he'd killed that he deserved this. His lip hurt. His back itched. He was going out of his mind with boredom. And hunger.

Food at Carterson's had never been plentiful: they'd started out with one meal a day like the man in the song 'Short Rations' that one of the guards had taught him and it had been all downhill from there.

He eyed Osheen, seated a short distance away. The first time they'd been served food that was infested with maggots (several months ago now), he'd picked them out and given them to Pat's second cousin, because the willowy young man seemed to take delight in eating them. But Murphy had put the kibosh on that as soon as he'd learned of it.

"You chose to live," he told his hound. "You won't, if you give away half your food."

"That isn't food," Heath had said.

Murphy slapped him. "It is if I tell you it is. You'll eat it, or I'll know the reason why."

Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if he'd told Murphy he'd decided to die.

He gazed into the bowl in which he'd dropped the overly aggressive maggot, steeled himself, and choked down the bowl's contents, unidentifiable even to him, despite the fact that he had acted as a sort of guru of the less desirable local foodstuffs for months, correctly identifying for the puzzled Irishmen a variety of weeds, greens, cactus, Mexican staples, atole, and the meat of various kinds of small vermin. He didn't know what this was.

Except that it was vile.

Pat was still going on about the importance of family.

_Fine, Pat. I'm nothing. I don't belong anywhere, I get it. _It wasn't only his back and his lip that were sore.

His heart ached as well.

"Pat?"

"What is it, awick?"

"What is that word you're always calling me?"

"'Awick?' It means 'son.'"

"I'm not your son," Heath snapped.

Pat grinned. "No, you're not, agrahgeeyal. So sorry if I've offended you."

Heath nodded. "Can I go see Ev and Gil now?"

"Did you finish eating?"

"Yeah."

"Show me your bowl."

Heath flushed, but displayed the empty bowl.

"Go then."

Heath slipped away into the relative freedom of the central plaza.

* * *

"How are you feeling, Ev?"

"Not good."

The prisoners at Carterson had divided themselves into cohorts, each lead by a strongman similar to Murphy, and consisting of about two dozen 'regular' members, plus a young, pretty 'companion' for the group's leader.

Ev was to the leader of the group to which Aaron and Gil Condon belonged what Heath was to Murphy. Sort of. Ev had once asked Heath if it hurt when Murphy 'did it.'

Heath had blinked. "When he thrashed me? Yes, it hurt a lot."

"And now?"

Was Ev crazy? "It hurts whenever he hits me."

Not all the mascots were as unwilling as Heath, however. Ev seemed quite fond of his… leader. But the lack of proper food was telling on him. Heath, well underage himself, judged Ev to be no more than sixteen. "Please try to eat, Ev. It'll do you good."

Ev looked at the squirming contents of the bowl. "I can't, Heath."

Heath started picking them out, dropping them into his own empty bowl, which he'd brought along, thinking he'd go past the water butts later for a… nice warm, wiggly drink. He shuddered.

Nearby, Gil cried out.

Heath looked over in concern. Aaron was trying to clean and rewrap his younger brother's leg, but it was badly infected.

"Sorry, Heath," Gil smiled through his pain. "I should try to be brave like you were."

"I was an idiot," Heath corrected. "Has that doctor looked at your leg?"

It was Aaron who answered. "Nope. Won't come and look, won't let me bring Gil to him."

"Did you tell him how bad it looks?" How bad it _smelled_ for that matter. A sickening, sweet smell.

"I told him," Aaron said.

"I could try telling him," Heath offered dubiously. "Ev could use some help, too."

Aaron's brows rose at the idea of Heath's having any pull with the doctor. "Knock yourself out."

* * *

"Can't you see I'm busy?"

"Yes, sir, I see that," Heath agreed, striving to be polite. The infirmary was packed, as a matter of fact, and the doctor did not seem to have any helpers. "But they're really bad off. I'd be glad to help you if—"

"I've had about enough of your help," the doctor snapped. "And your interference, too... If your friend is starving with a bowl of food next to him, I'd say try to get him to eat it. And as for your friend with the infection… try putting some maggots on it, there're plenty of those to go around."

Heath stared, appalled. "Put _maggots_—?"

"On the infection, yes. To debride the wound. But be careful they don't start eating living flesh."

"How do I—"

"But whatever you do, get out of here!" He turned Heath around bodily and pushed him out the door, the pressure of the doctor's hands on his still tender back making him wince.

* * *

"Can I see the Commandant?" Heath asked politely.

"What for?" the guard asked.

"Some friends of mine need medical treatment."

"Not you?" The guard recognized him as the boy who'd been whipped a few days before.

"No, not me."

The guard gave him a funny look, but said only, "I'll ask."

A few minutes later, the guard was back. "Commandant Bentell says he's too busy to see you, but suggests the punishment sergeant could probably spare you some time if you feel like you need more attention than you've already received."

* * *

Heath returned to the Condons to report his lack of success and the doctor's advice on what to do with Gil's wound.

"Put maggots on it?" Aaron repeated in disbelief.

"That's what he said."

"That's craz—"

"It's not actually." It was Blalock, who slept on the far side of the older Condon. "Only use a few, and watch carefully, so they don't start on living tissue. Probably take a day or two for them to clean the wound."

Heath returned to the task of picking the larvae out of Ev's bowl, then handed his own maggot-filled bowl to Blalock, and tried again to coax his friend to eat. "Ev, try to eat now."

He succeeded in getting a few spoonfuls down the older boy, what time the others were disposing of the maggots in Gil's wounded leg, since for the moment at least, the contents of Ev's bowl weren't moving.

Next to them, Gil screamed.


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note: **_ Though every prospect pleases, and only man is vile. –from the hymn _From Greenland's Icy Mountains, by Reginald Heber

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of this, except in the sense that love is ownership.

* * *

_Now:_

Seldom had three such distressed, ill-suited companions so reluctantly traversed together such beautiful country. Though breathing 'the air that angels breathe,' (as no less a personage than Mark Twain so aptly put it) their thoughts were of a place that had more closely resembled the lair of Satan: Carterson Prison.

They had little to say to each other. Each of them had been forced more or less against his (or her) will by considerations he or she held to be more important than personal comfort: Heath obeying his family's wishes, Cinda those of her beloved husband, and Matt doing what he knew he must to maintain the good opinion of those of his employers who didn't want him dead. Each traveler was alone, wrapped up in his or her own private thoughts, set to the music of the wind in the pines, and the jingling of the horses' harness.

Cinda Bentell was afraid. She stared at the golden young man's back worriedly. Heath Barkley. He was so young, and so strong (it had taken both of his brothers to hold him), how could he be one of those ragged animals from Carterson? She remembered the day a group of prisoners had rushed the Commandant's 'house' (really just a single room on one wall of the prison), only to be stopped at the deadline by the bullets of the guards. She and her daughters had been so afraid… The younger girl was dead now, but the older one was home in the South, married and happy and safe… which was more than she and Matt could say for themselves, here with this young man who wanted Matt dead. And why? For doing his duty.

Did this Heath Barkley think he was the only one who had suffered? They had _all _gone hungry and thirsty at Carterson, not only the prisoners, but the guards, she and Matt and the girls, too. They had all been ill, had all been trapped, by the war, by the circumstances. Didn't this young man understand that if her husband hadn't been placed in command of Carterson, then someone else would have, and it would have been just the same? She thought of her brother, dead at Rock Island, not because the North hadn't had food and medicine to save him, but for revenge, that most worthless of causes.

Anger surged through her. It was himself this Heath Barkley should blame, not her husband! What kind of fool would leave so rich and loving a family, intentionally depart so beautiful a home to interfere in the lives of strangers a thousand miles away? What hadn't he stayed on his family's ranch where he belonged? Yet the true basis of her anger was fear: fear that he would succeed in killing her husband after all. Matt had been mad to agree to this! She didn't want a home if this was to be the price. Anywhere Matt was _was _home.

"Don't exaggerate," Matt had objected when she'd urged him to refuse the Barkleys' request that he stay on, since the offer came with strings that bound them to this dangerously resentful young man. "He didn't try to kill me. He punched me in the face, that's all."

"He said he'd sworn to kill you if he ever found you again."

"Well, then he's already foresworn, because he found me, and I'm still alive."

"Found you!" Cinda had scoffed. "He walked onto you in his living room. He wasn't seeking you."

"Exactly my point, m'dear. He _wasn't _seeking me. He was living his life, and that's what we all need to do. My face reminded him of a very bad time in his life, and it startled him for a moment, but it's over, and he'll just have to get over it."

* * *

Heath would have liked to be gracious, to be 'the better man,' but he just couldn't be. It was all he could manage to be with them at all, to speak even half-way decently, not to scream his frustration, his distaste, his anger… his pain. He wondered how long he'd have to stay at the timber camp with them.

At least it wouldn't be seven months this time.

* * *

Matt Bentell, meanwhile, had been trying to place his young employer. He was so young even now, he must have been a mere boy during the war. He may have looked very different back in those days. The former Confederate commandant searched his memory diligently. All the prisoners had looked about the same after a while: filthy and skeletal, but there was something about this golden young man that was familiar. Proud and strong and resentful. Memory teased.

Matt intentionally drew his mind away from the problem. He breathed in the fragrant scent of the pines. The trees would make all their fortunes… _He had it!_

"Barkley!" He called.

The young man drew rein and trotted back to the carriage. "What is it, Bentell?"

"You're the water boy, aren't you?"

If Barkley was surprised to be remembered, it didn't show. "Yep," he agreed.

"I'm glad you made it through the war so well."

"No thanks to you." Irritation colored the deep voice.

"Well," Matt pointed out mildly, "You didn't die of the cholera, did you?"

Heath didn't answer, just kicked his horse back into a trot to ride on ahead.


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's Note: **_'Come listen to my song of starvation.' –from the song _'Short Rations'

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of this, except in the sense that love is ownership.

* * *

_Then: _

In the stinky darkness of Carterson's night, a familiar lilting whisper disturbed Heath's rest. "Get up, bhoy."

Heath groaned. "It's still night, Pat. Let me sleep."

"You can go back to sleep in a minute, alanna. For now, sit up so you can drink this."

Heath pulled himself up to a sitting position and accepted the vessel the Irishman handed him. "What is it?"

"I'll tell you later. Drink."

"But—"

"Drink! It's better if we don't get caught with it."

Heath took a cautious sip. It was warm, like all liquids here, but thick. It was sweet, almost like fresh milk, but also salty, like—" _Oh, God! _Heath started to lower the cup, but Pat put a finger under it and tipped it back up.

"Finish it," Pat whispered, urgently. "Everyone else has had theirs already."

Heath swallowed obediently, because it was easier than arguing, even though he was nearly gagging from the taste. And the thought. When he'd drained the vessel, he whispered, "Was that—"

"Cow's blood and milk," Pat confirmed. "The Commandant asked Diarmuid to have a look at their milk cow. Seems she's been ailing, and the dear lad has a healing touch with animals. He helped himself to a wee bit o'sustenance."

Heath didn't know what to say. He could still taste the blood in his mouth.

"Lie down again, aroon, and you can drift back to dreamland."

* * *

In the still air of mid-morning, a song arose. "Reduce our rations at all? It was difficult, yet it was done." Heath did not have much of a voice, but he sang with gusto. "We had one meal a day, it was small. Are we now, oh! ye gods! to have none? –Ow!" He looked around, irritated, and rubbed his stinging backside. "What was that for?"

Murphy frowned. "I told you before not to sing that."

"It's just a song, Pat." Heath finished folding their blankets, then sat down on them sulkily.

"I don't want you giving them ideas."

The 'food' ration issued by the prison kitchen for the past two days had consisted solely of atole. Food was now the dominant thought on everyone's mind.

Heath thought for a moment, then took a deep breath and sang, "When mighty Roast Beef was the Englishman's food—"

Murphy slapped his face.

"There's no pleasing you, is there?" Heath complained.

"Not with a song praising England."

The boy sighed, and tried again. "There's a spot that we soldiers all love; the mess-tent's the place that we mean, And the dish that we like to see there Is the old-fashioned white army bean."

"What's with you today?" Murphy asked.

"I dunno, Pat." The boy ran a shaky hand through his filthy hair. "I'm hungry, I guess."

"Aren't we all?" Pat agreed.

"Can I go help Lieutenant Terry and his people?"

"I don't see why not," the big man agreed.

Around them, Diarmuid and Osheen and some of the others had taken up Heath's song, "The army bean, nice and clean, We'll stick to our beans evermore."

* * *

Heath dropped down into the darkness, then reached a hand up to help Gil down.

"Thanks, Heath," the younger Condon said, moving out of the way so his brother could descend. The three stood still, waiting for their eyes to adjust so they'd be able to see again.

The 'maggot therapy' had so far improved Gil's condition that he was now able to be up and about, and though walking was clearly still somewhat painful, the young man chose not to let it cramp his style.

"What is this place?" Aaron asked. It was the first time the brothers had been down here.

"It was the ice house," Heath told him. "The well room is about 20 feet to the east of us."

"The tunnel's going north?"

"Yep."

Lieutenant Terry moved towards them from the direction of the opening to the tunnel. "You boys come to talk or to help?"

The lieutenant was the sole surviving commissioned officer remaining amongst the prisoners at Carterson. In fact, only four had been captured. Two had died in the initial escape attempt in the plaza, and the third of the cholera. Much to everyone's surprise, Terry, a 'miserable, useless second lieuy' had turned out to be a capable commander, allowing him to rise to the position of strongman of one of the cohorts, despite the fact that he was physically weaker than the majority of his followers.

The massive attrition of the still high death rate caused the prisoner cohorts to periodically regroup and consolidate. Terry's cohort had merged with the one the Condons belonged to, then in short order formed an alliance with Murphy's group. The tunnel was to be their means of escape.

"Come on, boys. There's plenty of work to do."


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note: **_ "__Our friends show us what we can do; our enemies teach us what we must do."_**_  
_**–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of this, except in the sense that love is ownership.

* * *

_Now: _

He had not noticed the dark haired young man in the crowded mess tent, but he'd have known that deep voice anywhere, even had it not been pronouncing the name, "Morley."

"Howdy, Abe," Heath said, barely glancing up.

"Heath," the man replied uncertainly. He hadn't been sure it actually was Heath. "Been a long time since Carson City." It worried him that the younger man was looking away from him. They'd parted on good terms, so why—

"We can't use ya, Abe." The stark refusal echoed in the suddenly silent mess tent.

The effort to master his feelings made Heath's voice come out colder than he'd intended. _I'm so sorry, Abe._ In the moment he crossed Morley's name decisively out of the book, Heath found he actually hated himself more than he hated Bentell. What was he doing? He _liked_ Morley. The memory of a Comstock silver mine, complete with dank fumes and broken piles of 'horse' left over from between the veins of ore flickered in his mind.

"Whaddaya mean ya can't use me?" Morley snapped. He'd understood the camp was short-handed. If this had been some kind of wild goose cha—

"You had a brother in Carterson," Heath explained dispassionately.

_Huh? _"So?" It made no sense. What did his brother have to do with anything?

Heath's self-hatred deepened. This was what his crazy family had brought him to: betraying his friends to protect his enemy. Aunt Rachel had been right: he'd destroyed himself in seeking out the Barkleys. What kind of man was he? He owed Abe his loyalty, for himself as much as for the brother he'd lost at Carterson. Instead, "So he died there, you told me all about it."

"That's right." But Heath himself— "You told me a few things about that place yourself." Morley pointed out calmly. Surely if Heath could work with Bentell, then he could. The war was over.

"We can't use ya, Abe," the blonde repeated, as though they were strangers.

The old man seconded the dismissal. "Next."

Confusion and need blended to give an edge of anger to the deep voice, "Now, look, I came a long way—"

The gray haired man's voice was iron. "I said, 'Next.'"

It was useless. Recognizing defeat, Morley left the tent.

* * *

No sooner had Morley left than—_Boy howdy! The Condons are here!_

Well, the same went for them. Heath only wished it went for himself.

But surprisingly, "Sign them on," Bentell ordered.

Was he crazy? What earthly use had it been to force Heath to come then? Bentell was clearly set on getting himself killed, and while Heath had no problem with that as far as it went, if the man didn't want to avoid working with people connected to Carterson, then there really_ wasn't _any reason for Heath to have come instead of Nick!

And why exclude Morley, if the Condons were here? Or Heath himself come to that? Morley was probably the _least_ of Bentell's problems.

He couldn't stop thinking about it as they signed on the rest of the new men and assigned them to work groups.

_'Now look, I came a long way—'_ Heath knew that half-angry tone for what it was: as close as such a proud man could come to begging. He'd been without work himself. Many times. Hungry.

Heath looked at Bentell. The man was as hard as nails. As pitiless now as he'd been at Carterson.

_Why had he allowed the Condons to stay? _

As the other men cleared the tent, Heath ventured to ask, "Do you feel the same way about Morley as you do about the Condons?"

Bentell's only answer was a shrug.

Heath vaulted up from the table and _ran_.

* * *

Darkness had fallen. "Morley!" Heath shouted into the tree-shrouded darkness of the trail. "Abe! It's Heath!"

It was too late. Abe was gone, their friendship broken, and he did not even expect Morley to understand why. Heath didn't understand it himself. His eyes were watering. There must be dust in the air. He blinked rapidly to try to clear it.

"I'm sorry, Abe," Heath said aloud. "I'm so sorry."

The soughing of the wind in the pines was the only answer.

* * *

Morley trudged along the trail. Why in blazes hadn't they asked him about Carterson before bringing him up here, if they were so concerned about it? He'd have told them about his brother, had anyone asked him… or maybe he wouldn't have, at that. He sighed. He needed a job, and at this point, he'd have accepted a job from Satan himself… had almost had one, in fact, but the devil wouldn't have him. He laughed suddenly. It would take him days to walk down off this mountain. _Dammit._

Morley heard a horse approaching, but it was headed in the wrong direction, towards the camp rather than away from it. He sighed again and stepped out of the path.

"Morley!" the rider called, as if Abe were a long distance off.

"What?" His tone was surly. Had Heath forgotten to kick him, while he was at it?

"Abe! Thank God!" Barkley slid off his horse, relieved.

The burly man stood arms akimbo, to regard his erstwhile friend. "Whaddaya want?"

"Umm," the younger man seemed abashed, though it was hard to tell in the dim light. "Do you still want a job?"

"You think someone else offered me one on this path?"

"No."

"I thought you couldn't use me?"

"I was wrong."

"How's that?"

"We're… my family's worried someone may try to kill Bentell." There was a short pause, then he added, "because of Carterson."

"And you thought that was why I came up here?"

Heath nodded.

Morley considered him gravely for several long moments. "Wasn't me swore to kill 'im. That was _you." _


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's Note: ****_ "_**_I love and hate. You ask, how can it be? I know not, but I feel the agony." _–Catullus

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of this, except in the sense that love is ownership.

* * *

_Then: _

The bowl was filled only with a black liquid.

"What's this shite?" The big Irishman asked when Heath handed it to him.

"S'poseably coffee."

One black eyebrow rose. "But you don't think so?"

"Wouldn't make sense for them to waste real coffee on us," Heath opined.

Murphy tasted it. "Chicory, ya think?"

"Reckon so."

Murphy frowned. "Is this all they plan to give us today?"

"That's what they said."

"If we had to be in a prison camp, why did it have to be one that's no more than a pimple on the arse of the Confederacy?"

Heath had no answer except a shrug.

Murphy sighed, exasperated. "I knew ya shouldn't'a been singin' that song. And wasn't I right now, boyo?"

* * *

The bowl made a useful digging tool at least, even if he had no food to fill it. Heath filled it slowly with dirt instead.

There was something wrong with him. He felt very weak today. He noticed it especially when he had to raise his arms, and his mind was clouded, as if he were half asleep.

"Cut in the lard with two knives," Lt. Terry was saying, while digging with his own bowl a few feet away, "then add just enough cold water to make it stick together. Don't handle the dough too much, or it won't bake up flaky."

"Double crust?" Heath asked tiredly, after a short pause, "or lattice?"

The lieutenant was shocked by the suggestion. "With Strawberry-Rhubarb? Lattice, definitely. Always lattice, so you can see the lovely ruby filling." The slender brunette smiled, imagining the piquant flavor of the blend of sweet fruit with the pucker-producing stalks of the buckwheat pieplant. "Keeps you regular, too."

Heath's inquiries were the result of a chance remark he and Murphy had overheard from one of their fellow prisoners ("Shut your piehole already!"), and the big man had sent Heath around visiting the various cohorts to find out what types of pastries the men favored.

Heath had been introduced to a dizzying variety of pies, pasties, and baked dishes, fruit, meat, vinegar, vegetables, or chocolate, wrapped in cracker crumbs, mashed potatoes, pastry shells, oil and short crusts, or wrapped lovingly in layers of paper thin filo. Every man he spoke to had had his favorite, sometimes more than one. At this point he had acquired enough mouth-watering recipes to open a bakery. Not one of the men had been able to resist his inquiries.

It was a pleasantly compelling torture to think and talk so much about food when you had none.

"What about you, Heath?"

"Huh?" His mind had drifted off alarmingly again.

"What do you like to eat?"

In his mind's eye, the table was suddenly set in his mother's cabin back in Strawberry, delectable smells emanating from the fireplace. He was nearly overcome by the power of his desire to be back there in truth. _I miss you, Momma. _And not only for her cooking.

"I like duck best," Heath admitted shyly. "I'd shoot us a brace of duck right now, if'n I had a gun, and we was out of here."

The lieutenant chuckled softly. "Is that what you'd shoot?" When Heath didn't answer, Terry promised, "We'll be out of here soon. You believe that, don't you, boy?"

The responding voice was soft. "Yes, sir."

* * *

Something was going on.

Something bad.

Heath could feel it in the charged air as soon as he emerged into the open plaza. The prisoners filled it like they did whenever someone was getting fl—**_CRACK!_**

Heath shuddered as though the lash had hit him. Once it's _been_ you, you can never regard it happening to someone else in quite the same way again.

_CRACK!_

It was loud. Had it been that loud when they'd flogged him? He couldn't remember, but then, he'd been a little distracted at the ti— _Whsst—Crack!_

He was close enough to see the punishment sergeant now, and the whip.

It was the heavy, multi-pronged flogger the man had decided not to use on Heath.

_Crack!_

The victim's broad back was already bloody. The beating must have been going on for some time. They'd heard nothing from inside the tunnel.

_Whsst—CRACK!_

"Heath!" a deep, not very familiar voice caught his attention. Morley, he thought the man's name was. A once burly, but now nearly skeletal man from Michigan, who'd spoken lovingly of a double-crusted peach pie, cut in a generous big wedge, and drowned in country cream. "Rounkles wants you!"

Heath scanned the crowd, then moved around towards the guard, who stood on the opposite side of the triangle. He tried to avoid the eyes of Commendant Bentell, who never missed such proceedings, despite the look of distaste on his lean face.

When he reached the Confederate guard's side, Heath said, "You want me?" then flinched at the next _Crack!_

"He said he wanted you to stand where he could see you," Rounkles explained.

"He?" the boy asked stupidly.

**_CRACK!_**

"Who do you think?" the guard snapped. "Pat."

_Crack!_

_Oh, God. _

Rounkles grabbed Heath's arm as the young prisoner whirled to face the man at the triangle.

It was Murphy.

**_Crack! _**

"Pat!" Heath yelled frantically.

Rounkles shook his arm. "Are you crazy?"

Murphy's eyes opened, focused on Heath and smiled, before wincing at the next_—_

_Crack!_

Rounkles' iron grip on his arm was the only thing that kept Heath from rushing the punishment sergeant and trying to grab the whip away from him.

_Whsst—Crack!_

He thought about the beating Murphy had given him that very first day, and wondered why he wasn't happy that the big Irishman was finally getting his comeuppance.

He hated Murphy.

**_Crack!_**

Didn't he?

_Please stop. _

"Cut him down," Bentell said at last.

* * *

Heath had been able to walk away from his own flogging, but no one had gone easy on Murphy, and it took the combined efforts of Osheen, Diarmuid, and Heath himself tucked under the big Irishman's arm to keep him on his feet and guide him back to his bedplace.

Pat grunted in pain, and lay down to let Osheen tend him as well as he could.

Osheen started to send Heath for some water until Pat objected, "Have Diarmuid go." His eyes skimmed groggily over Heath. "You lie down here by me, aroonshark," he whispered, exhausted. "Just hold my hand."

"Why did he whip you, Pat?"

Pat made a wheezing sound that Heath almost didn't recognize as a laugh. "I complained about the food." He winked. "You're not the only idiot around here, ya know."

Heath lay down next to his friend, his right hand enveloped in Pat's, his left arm wrapped around the big man's forearm. He stayed that way until they were both asleep.


End file.
